Herminio Diaz

Herminio Diaz Garcia (1923-29 May 1966) was a Cuban criminal and associate of the Trafficante crime family who was one of the suspects in the assassination of US president John F. Kennedy in 1963. Diaz was previously an American Mafia bodyguard and political assassin affiliated with far-right rebels in Cuba, and he was killed in a failed raid against the Cuban Army in 1966.

Biography


Herminio Diaz Garcia was born in Cuba in 1923, and he joined the Cuban Restaurant Workers Union while working as a cashier at the Hotel Habana-Rivera. Diaz was later recruited into the Trafficante crime family of the American Mafia, working as head of security at one of Santo Trafficante's casinos and serving as his bodyguard. Diaz was also known to have taken part in over 20 murders as a political assassin. In 1948, he murdered a man at the Cuban consulate in Mexico, and he was also involved in a 1957 assassination attempt on Costa Rican president Jose Figures.

JFK assassination
When Fidel Castro and the communists seized power in 1959, Diaz joined a militant right-wing organization that utilized terrorist tactics to fight against the Cuban government. In July 1963, Diaz moved to the United States, and he was alleged to have assassinated President John F. Kennedy. The National Enquirer, a far-right US tabloid, claimed that Diaz was a mercenary hired by Castro, and that he had shot JFK from a grassy knoll; however, Diaz was vehemently opposed to Castro, and the "picture" of Diaz in the magazine was wrong. Telegraph, a British news publication, claimed that the Cuban exiles had an axe to grind with JFK over the Bay of Pigs invasion, and that Diaz's involvement with both the Mafia and the Cuban exiles could have made him a suspect.

Monte Barreto raid
In December 1963, Diaz took part in a failed assassination attempt on Castro, and he began providing smuggled arms to anti-Castro militants. On 29 May 1966, Diaz and a few other anti-Castro rebels took part in a raid on Monte Barreto in the Miramar district of Cuba, and Diaz was killed. Tony Cuesta, the last survivor of the squad, attempted to kill himself with a hand grenade rather than be taken alive, only to be blinded and deprived of his right hand. Cuesta later told some cellmates that Diaz had been the man behind the JFK assassination, and Diaz became one of the suspects brought up by the JFK assassination conspiracy theorists in their arguments.